Walking Beside the Hudson

The gunmetal spire
of the Chrysler Building
rises through a glare so fierce
that it seems impossibly close-
as when the camera zeroes in
and the entire audience
instinctively blinks-
not like a scene
where I myself am present,
although I pass unobserved
on the opposite bank,
down a road worn white with use,
through rust-gnawed debris
and high grass.
More and more I am reminded
of the figure in the corner
of some Van Dyck or Breughel:
that ploughman or woodchopper who,
humble and infinitely human,
follows behind
the immaculately groomed duke
with the wide plumed hat,
leading a mare draped in gold;
and who, although he isn't really
the central subject of the portrait,
has, one suspects,
more deeply touched the artist
than has his master.
Similarly, I imagine,
I am spending my days in a corner,
with my fairly ordinary sorrows
and my equally unremarkable joys:
an anonymous figure walking alone
beside a muddy river,
watching the water fill with light-
always aware of the missiles somewhere
poised in their gleaming silos,
ready to crack the earth like an egg;
certain that in my own life
love is still unimaginably distant;
and somehow blessed despite it all,
a smile surprising my lips
as a dark vee of geese,
stitching the air with their cries,
crosses the mirrored immensity
of the World Trade Center. 

© Robert Lavett Smith